1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to powder granule inspection apparatuses that automatically inspect more than one category of such powder granule samples as pharmaceutical material, plastic materials or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The inspection of the powder granule samples such as pharmaceutical materials, plastic materials or the like, for such items as existence or not of metallic foreign particles, mixture of coloured foreign particles with number and size thereof, moisture content, etc. were conventionally respectively done as separate manual operations. For this reason, in order to conduct a plural item inspection on the powder granule samples, man power and time were consumed so that the sample characteristics could change during the inspection to an extent that the obtained inspection data would reflect an inferior precision.
Therefore, the applicant for the present application has developed a powder granule sample inspection apparatus that can continuously and automatically conduct such plural items of inspection as above mentioned on powder granule sample as Japanese Utility Model application No. 63-15481.
As shown on FIG. 1, such powder granule sample inspection apparatus starts by dropping the powder granule sample inside a connection tube 60 during which the existence or not of metallic foreign particles were inspected by metal detector 61. Then the dropped sample was loaded onto a conveying means which in this case was the surface of a belt conveyer 62 to be transferred by a certain distance during which time inspection was conducted by inspection equipment that is placed above belt conveyer 62, such as a moisture gauge 63 and television camera 64 equipped with strobo for inspections of the moisture content and number and size of coloured foreign particles. Further, the applicant of the present application has developed a powder granule sample inspection apparatus that uses a hard and flat surfaced rotary table in lieu of the belt conveyer 62 shown in FIG. 1 with a purpose to prevent the mixture of the sample after inspection with the sample before inspection in order to secure the obtainment of inspection data with high reliability, and to enable a virtually complete removal of the sample that was inspected from the surface of the conveying means. Further purposes to prevent the erroneous detection of the sample shades when inspecting the sample on the surface of the rotary table for coloured foreign particles by the strobo irradiation from the above so that the shade is thrown on the surface of the rotary table, a semi transparent rotary table that passes light is adopted with the strobo irradiation from the front and back surfaces of the rotary table.
However, since such above mentioned rotary table of powder granule sample inspection apparatus has a hard and flat surface, when vibration is applied to the rotary table, the sample granules on the surface will tumble or move so that there is the fear of falling off from the rotary table surface before the inspection and will not pass under the inspection equipment to an extent that the entire volume of the sample that was supplied on the rotary table surface would not be inspected and there was the problem that such obtained inspection data lacked the reliability.